On Skis

In 1928 a U. S. team of 13 sailed for Europe to compete in the Second Winter Olympic Games. Their departure received no attention whatever. They gave a mediocre account of themselves at St. Moritz. They sailed home again with few better grounds for satisfaction than the fact that almost no one knew what they had been up to.

In New York last week, the sailing of the S. S. Manhattan was delayed for more than half an hour by the business of hoisting the white Olympic flag, ornamented by five interlocking red, blue, black, yellow and green circles and the motto Citius, Alt ins, For tins (faster, higher, stronger). Attending this ceremony were 45 members of the U. S. team of 79, sailing to compete this year in the Fourth Winter Olympic Games next month at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Their departure was the most important sports news of the week.

The difference between the importance of the U. S. Winter Olympic teams in 1928 and 1936 was due, not to protests against sending any Olympic team at all to Nazi Germany this year, but to the fact that since 1928 winter sports in the U. S. have ceased to be a patrician fad and have become instead a national pastime in a class with baseball, football and golf. At Garmisch-Partenkirchen, U. S. speed skaters and bobsledders have more than a fair chance to repeat their victories of the 1932 winter games at Lake Placid. At hockey, fancy skating and skiing they are likely to be beaten. Major event of the 1936 Winter Olympics will be the ski-jump, for which grandstands have been built to seat a crowd of 80,000. Practicing at Garmisch-Partenkirchen last week, on the jump which has a swastika placed below the take-off so that a good jumper lands beyond it, Norway's 21-year-old Birger Ruud. Olympic champion in 1932, jumped 269 ft., won an impromptu tournament. Ablest all-round skier on the U. S. team, Richard Durrance, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen for practice ahead of his confreres, placed 18th -- an achievement more creditable than it seems because his specialty is not jumping but downhill racing. Major development in the rise of U. S. winter sports in the last eight years has been the sudden, inexplicable boom in skiing. Increase in the popularity of skiing has been noticeable ever since the 1932 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, but the boom really started last year. This winter, skiing has suddenly become a nationwide mania. Evidences: In New York, department stores (Saks-Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Altman's, Spalding's) within the past two months have installed indoor ski-slides, covered with borax. Instructors ($2 to $3 an hour) give advice, teach beginners to keep their balance, to perform simple turns, to stop without falling down. In California, sale of ski equipment is this year 100% above last. In Hollywood, characters like Charlie Chaplin, Helen Twelvetrees, Joel McCrea, Mrs. Frank Borzage, have become skiing devotees. At the University of California, three years ago, Alexander Hildebrand, son of Chemistry Professor Joel Hildebrand, was the only competent practicing skier. Now not only California, but University of California at Los Angeles. Southern California and Nevada have ski teams, plan to compete with those of the University of Washington which have long been among the ablest in the U. S. Snow trains, long an established convenience for city skiers in Europe, have suddenly become popular in the U. S. Started in Boston six years ago, they were tried in New York last year. This year, the New York, New Haven & Hartford and New York Central are running snow trains, expect to take 2,000 skiers to snow every weekend. Skiing started in prehistoric Scandinavia. Long practiced for utility, it became a sport in 1879, when the King of Norway promoted a tournament between skiers of Telemark & Christiania. The sport of skiing was introduced into Switzerland a few years before the turn of the Century by English sportsmen who had picked it up in Norway, correctly considered the Alps ideal skiing terrain. In the U. S., the first skier on authentic record was the Rev. John L. Dyer, a Colorado Methodist preacher, who used skis to carry mail to his parishioners in the early 1850's. Norwegians in the Midwest organized the first U. S. ski-jumping tournament in 1887. In 1904, five ski clubs combined to form .the U. S. Ski Association, which now belongs to the Federation Internationale de Ski. Contrary to the notions of nonskiers, whose impressions of the sport are gained from newsreels where skiers are shown only in midair, ski-jumping is a relatively unimportant branch of the sport. One skier in ten makes a practice of jumping. In Finland, most competition takes the form of races on the level (langlauf). In the Alps, downhill races around sharp turns marked by flags (slalom) are popular. The Olympic Games will include all three. Best skiing grounds in the U. S. are the Adirondacks (Lake Placid;, White Mountains (Peckett's, Tuckerman's Ravine), Berkshires (Pittsfield, Salisbury), Poconos (Skytop Club) in the East; Yosemite (where a new ski-house opened last week), Sequoia, Big Pines, Soda Springs, Lake Arrowhead, Mt. Rainier, Lake Tahoe in the West. Unknown to most U. S. novice skiers is the fact that skiing has rigid conventions. Bright woolen suits & tasseled caps are as improper as tailcoats would be for tennists. A correct costume is dark gabardine trousers, windbreaker, boots with heels grooved for bindings, cap with dark visor. Teachers estimate that anyone can learn to ski competently in three winters. To become expert, skiers must start young. Only U. S. boys' school in which skiing is the major sport is Northwood, whose grounds adjoin Lake Placid. Dartmouth, where skiing started 26 years ago, has long turned out the ablest U. S. college skiers. Dick Durrance, who grew up in Tarpon Springs, Fla., learned skiing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he went to school for six years and where at 14, he amazed native skiers by inventing such maneuvers as the "tempo"' turn and the forward somersault for crossing obstacles. Last year he was the most famed member of Dartmouth's skiing team. Last week, his brother Jack helped a Dartmouth team defeat its traditional rival, McGill, 595-to-566, in the annual Intercollegiate Ski Tournament at Lake Placid.

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